CEO Insights India

When the world screeched to a halt in the year 2020, most people paused with it office workers stayed home, schools closed, and cities emptied. But in that moment of stillness, a brave few unearthed the inspiration and courage to launch new businesses. Sohail Khan (Founder, The Builders Club) believed that an unprecedented global crisis will unveil tons of opportunities and this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to leapfrog. He realized job loss or extra free time motivated aspiring founders to spin passion projects into full-fledged startups. To help these startup entrepreneurs, he built an online platform to bring together a community of investors and startup founders which ultimately resulted in creating a network of entrepreneurs from different parts of the globe helping each other build products and businesses.

Sohail comes from a rich educational and professional background; he has a decade of experience in Strategy, Operations & Marketing across diverse industries like media & entertainment, healthcare & real estate with a focus on helping brands/ clients set up new businesses and excel in existing ones. Leveraging his data-driven approach and single-minded focus, Sohail, today, is spearheading one of the largest global entrepreneur networks helping founders build sustainable and profitable businesses.

Let’s hear it from him.

Tell us about the unique experiences IIT Kharagpur offers and what did you learn from the campus beyond academics.
IIT Kharagpur has been a turning point in my life – I turned a new leaf;

I was going to a place away from home for the first time. With 2000+ people coming together from different regions and cultures and the amazing campus equipped with all kinds of amenities, IIT Kharagpur indeed became my home away from home. The way I look at it now is it's a microcosm of the world which one goes to after graduating. Academics was not that big a part of my life, extra-curricular activities were. I was involved in a lot of social and cultural activities. Building long-lasting friendships and connections, meeting students from different backgrounds, and gaining transferable skills, all improved my confidence helping me prepare for the field of life.

How would you define The Builders Club as an organization and its current position in the market?
Every business solves a problem for its audience. But in that process, for entrepreneurs, problem statements change at different stages of their journey. So, at The Builders Club, we have different tracks for each stage of the life cycle of entrepreneurship. One of the key value propositions or the differentiator of The Builders Club is the quality and curation that we have. We always try to provide our clients with the best and we are also very comprehensive in our overall value proposition. We pride ourselves in saying that we are kind of a one-stop destination for anyone who's building anything under the sun. So even if you're an idea stage founder who's building a deep tech product in Ludhiana, to anybody who is a unicorn sitting in Australia, we have something for you. And that's primarily because we have identified the specific services or tools that you might require in your industry at your stage. With our community driven approach, today The Builders Club is one of the largest global entrepreneur networks helping founders build sustainable and profitable

businesses.

Tell us about your leadership approach.
The most important and difficult task any entrepreneur faces in building a business is hiring. Hence, I take time in the hiring process. It is said that, if you spend 80 percent of your time hiring the right person then you will not have to spend 80 percent of the time explaining or getting the work done from them. They will do their work them selves. I have a very hands-off approach when it comes to managing teams and projects, allowing my team to make decisions about how things should be done. At the same time, I lay significant emphasis on providing regular feedback to my team. I focus on balancing positive and negative feedback and acknowledging my team's strengths and achievements, as well as areas for improvement. I believe in the management mantra for giving individuals feedback: Praise in public, criticize in private. This helps me to build close-knit teams, work better together, and ensure catching issues before they become major problems. Also, I make sure my people are directed toward a higher purpose and understand that they not working for me but for the vision of the organization.

What is the future destination you are heading towards?
Through The Builders Club, currently, we are touching close to 100000 lives but in the coming years, we are aspiring to grow our network and touch a million lives soon. The Club is helping grow some of the best and the newest ideas which are out there in the ecosystem. We focus on offering everything a startup needs in order to build these ideas.

Sohail Khan, Founder, The Builders Club
An alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Lucknow, Sohail, with profound cross-industry experience, is currently leading The Builders Club where he is helping founders build sustainable businesses.

Awards & Recognition:The Builders Club startup founders podcast was awarded The Best Podcast in the Long form Segment by Spotify in 2022